One way to dismiss sustainability and any smidgen of corporate social responsibility is to shout the antiquated argument that we only have a choice between the economy and the environment. Xerox has shown that is not the case. Last year the company announced it was working on carbon neutrality; to that end, in the push to make the company more "green," Xerox encouraged its employees to share ideas on how the organization could become more efficient. Green can be lean, and the environment can lend itself to economy, to tweak the word a tad.

ADVERTISEMENT

The results from employees’ rethinking: Xerox has saved US$10.2 million this year while it eliminated 2.6 million pounds of waste. Employees at facilities around the world were engaged in a corporate wide "Earth Awards" program that challenged them to leverage innovation as a means to saving the company resources.

Some may sniff that $10 million is small potatoes for a $15 billion dollar company, but a cursory look through Xerox's financials reveals that net income after tax was $475 million last year. Hence the documents systems and services icon has taken an impressive step. Xerox's company-wide competition narrowed down to 30 nominations, and from there, 13 winners were announced. Winners, scattered across North America and Europe, included:

- In Wilsonville, OR, a research team designed the smallest package possible for one of its colored ink lines. The internal packaging, reduced in content, is now made from 100% post-consumer recycled material, and the box in which the ink is contained is of 43% recycled material.

- In Webster, NY a toner plant created a more efficient process for handling wastewater. In addition to a savings of $80,000 annually, 60% less wastewater went offsite for disposal; the plant's waste generation was halved; and the amount of water required for mixing raw toner materials was slashed by one-third...